cancer or no cancer

And the answer is....

NO CANCER!

What a shocker.  A Nick Spark's book/movie without someone dying of cancer.  However, The Lucky One did include the following usual aspects:

• The girl (let's call her Buttface) immediately dislikes the boy (let's call him Sexy) despite his sexiness. 
• Just kidding, Buttface falls in love with Sexy pretty fast.  
• Hot, hot, hot sexy time.  (Or in some cases, a fairly innocent kiss during a high school theatre performance.)
• Oh snap, something happens so Buttface and Sexy don't speak for awhile (i.e. he realizes he's poor and she's rich, she finds out that he's sort of a stalker, she has cancer and he freaks out about it).
• Someone dies.
• A kind of/sort of happy ending.

And there you have it.  Now, you have a detailed outline of how to write a harlequin romance.  If you want, you can add some cancer.  A little bit of cancer can't hurt!